barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of
devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence;
industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because
there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence,
too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at
the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development
of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they
have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are
fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring
disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the
existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois
society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.
And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one
hand inforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the
other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough
exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the
way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by
diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the
ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring
death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who
are to wield those weapons--the modern working class--the
proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed,
in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working
class, developed--a class of labourers, who live only so long